He's the oldest - looking anyway - candidate out there and is pummeling the opposition with young voters. Part of the reason is that younger voters don;t have the same negative feelings about socialism that older voters have. Generational change helps explain this. Older generations equate socialism with the Soviet Union and communism. Younger voters equate it with the more benign governments of Scandinavia.
It's interesting to point out that the same voters who are now attracted to Sander's socialism were also attracted to Ron Paul's libertarianism a few years back. The two ideologies share little in common - though there is some overlap between the two.
538 walks through the phenomenon and has some useful things to say about the ideological incoherence of the two parties.
- Click here for the article.
It's interesting to point out that the same voters who are now attracted to Sander's socialism were also attracted to Ron Paul's libertarianism a few years back. The two ideologies share little in common - though there is some overlap between the two.
538 walks through the phenomenon and has some useful things to say about the ideological incoherence of the two parties.
- Click here for the article.
. . . terms such as “liberal” and “conservative” are fairly cynical also, at least in the way they’re applied in contemporary American politics. Rather than reflecting their original, philosophical meanings, they instead tend to be used as euphemisms for the policy positions of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. Those parties’ platforms are not all that philosophically coherent, nor do they reflect the relatively diverse and multidimensional political views of individual Americans. Instead, the major American political parties are best understood as coalitions of interest groups that work together to further one another’s agendas.
What’s distinctive about both the Sanders and Ron Paul coalitions is that they consist mostly of people who do not feel fully at home in the two-party system but are not part of historically underprivileged groups. On the whole, young voters lack political influence. But a young black voter might feel more comfortable within the Democratic coalition, which black political leaders have embraced, while a young evangelical voter might see herself as part of a wave of religious conservatives who long ago found a place within the GOP.
A young, secular white voter might not have a natural partisan identity, however, while surrounded by relatively successful peers. In part, then, the “revolutions” that both Sanders and Paul speak of are revolutions of rising expectations.
And a key graphic:
